Name: Delaware Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup cottage cheese, cut into 1-inch dice; Coarse sea salt, to taste; Black pepper, to taste; Cayenne pepper, to taste; Lettuce leaves; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,037 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Delaware Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Choose soft yet firm cottage cheese and cut it into 1-inch dice.
Season the cheese with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.
Serve the seasoned cheese on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with mayonnaise dressing before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,037 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cottage cheese + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cottage cheese + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese: Provides the main body of the salad, with soft curds that hold their shape when diced.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds fat and richness, moistening the cheese and softening its tang.